Classic PSA night

A public service announcement, those age old scoldy commercials mostly trying to mold you, bunky, into a better citizen. You probably remember the famous Indian ad where he had trash thrown at him and he cried. PSA, advising us to stop this nonsense before it kills us all.

Well friends, here's a PSA about not just tossing your trash on the sidewalk when you're done with it, lest it draw RATS! A classic from David Lynch from 1991.

Central Park just opened four previously off-limits acres

It's true, a section of Central Park, almost four acres has been off-limits to everyone and has recently started allowing people back in, as long as it's during limited times and limited amounts of people:

Did you know that there are four acres of Central Park that have been closed off since the 1930s? While the Central Park Conservancy has given the park a remarkable new life since the 1980s, they haven't quite gotten to everything, but now they've announced a "new" (to you) section is ready for humans: the Hallett Nature Sanctuary (née Promontory) will open this summer.

Aside from Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, the Sanctuary—located by the Pond—is the only permanently fenced-off section of the park. “The story is, [then Parks Commissioner] Robert Moses closed it off because he wanted it to turn into a bird sanctuary,” said the CPC's Douglas Blonsky.

So follow this link and see the exact whens and wheres to get a look at this previously unseen (and unspoiled) tract of land.

You'd think less helicopter traffic on the Hudson River would make almost everyone happy

But it seems like most people aren't. Tour operators are upset for the obvious reasons, they feel the 50% cut in sightseeing helicopter traffic is far too limiting. Citizen groups who said despite claims to the opposite they weren't included in the negotiations as they want it all stopped. An interesting read on helicopter tours and limiting them assured to rankle you on one level or another.

New Jersey wonders why the cost of doing business is so high

The state of New Jersey is going to approve JP Morgan Chase $188 million dollars in tax credits to move 2,000 workers to Jersey City. WE as taxpayers are paying a company that made over 5 BILLION dollars last QUARTER $188 million dollars to move 2,000 workers across the river. Could this money not have been invested more wisely? Maybe some smaller businesses could use a tax cut. Why give a mega-bank that engages in this kind of business practice our money?

JPMorgan Chase & Co has agreed to pay at least $125 million to settle probes by U.S. state and federal authorities that the bank sought to improperly collect and sell consumer credit card debt, according to people familiar with the matter.

What a great company. Exactly the kind of company who is really undeserving of the money first off and it's truly unnecessary secondly make this a bad bad deal for New Jersey taxpayers but the usual suspects, Chris Christie, Steve Fulop et al were jumping up and down for it. These guys just don't seem to get economics or if they do it doesn't show up in people looking to gain higher office. Jersey City wouldn't live or die with these jobs coming here or not. There's no requirement those getting New Jersey tax money hand over fist actually live in New Jersey. Very few if any of these people will set up shop here so in essence we just subsidized a lot of New Yorkers. Again, reasons the cost of doing business is so high and there is no benefit in making it so.

Happy 4th of July!

Johnny wants to wish everyone in the Jersey City Desk viewing area a very happy and proud 4th of July. It rings out extra loud this year with the gay marriage ruling so that even more people now feel included in this great American experiment.

Make sure to follow Johnny on the Twitter or drop back here later tonight around midnight, Johnny is going to have a special treat for all of you!

Here's a video of the F-16 Thunderbirds roaring up the Hudson this morning

Johnny went up to Newport this morning to take some video and here's a quick clip:

The Shake Shack in Madison Square Park was closed for months

It re-opened today to huge, incredibly huge lines. Really? Back on the first day? You had to know what it was going to be like. Johnny swears sometimes people have more time than brains. If Disneyland re-opened after say six months would you go on the day it opened back up? Of course not.

Help a blogger friends, why would someone needlessly go stand in a long line?

The blizzard that wasn't, #WinterStormWeatherChannel

Well now, wasn't that a lot of prep and fret for nothing? What, 9 inches down from 27? While Jersey City and most of the surround dodged a big winter bullet there are a lot of websites this morning asking how the prognosticators could get it so wrong. Johnny's gonna tell you about hype vs forecasting.

When meteorologists are trying to get a bead on a huge winter storm, especially a nor' easter, there is a lot of guesswork right up until the storm begins it's final path. They will try and prepare people, point out the possibilities and dangers. They will give you nothing but facts about the storm. They won't name it, they won't try and get you to participate in social media over it and they don't have a vested financial interest to hype the storm.

That's where the incredible failure of The Weather Channel comes in. They DO have a financial interest to hype a storm, first by naming it, then pumping it on Twitter and Facebook. They have shareholders, being owned by NBCUniversal and investment firms The Blackstone Group and Bain Capital. Why would they name storms unless it was some way to get you to come view their station or go to their website of Facebook page? Hype that storm, drive traffic. Hype it more, make sure people are using OUR hashtag. They would not do it simply for altruism.

Was this miss entirely on the Weather Channel? Of course not. But they sure seem to be the ones willing to hype weather over just reporting it, all for money.

Broadway will go dark this evening

No shows tonight.

Patrick Lynch is the sound of a spoon being pounded on a highchair

One must begin to wonder if Patrolmen's Benevolent Association Patrick Lynch isn't going to get someone hurt or worse. After yesterday's "discussion" about relations with the mayor's office, Lynch's supporters began shoving officers who dared disagree with him. So he has supporters around him who don't think they should answer to the mayor's office and voters of New York City (**BZZT BZZT Police State Police State**) but now they try and intimidate physically officers more interested in getting better bullet proof vests and better cars on the road than just demanding an apology from Mayor de Blasio. Guess turning your backs on him despite a widow's wishes wasn't enough. Here, read for yourself:

The Daily News' witness told the paper that one cop responded by telling Lynch that he was focusing on a matter immaterial to the day-to-day lives of officers, which sparked the face-off between pro- and anti-Lynch factions within the NYPD.

"This is what my members want: they want more cars, better vests, more manpower," one cop shouted, according to the sources. "They don't want an apology."

Another union member told Lynch: "I don't care about an apology. I want to know what you're going to do to protect us."

So now the NYPD is divided and in NO WAY can Lynch blame the Mayor for this. This is his tantrum and sooner or later an innocent will pay for it. The NYPD gave out ZERO tickets in Times Square New Year's Eve. How's that for policing?

Get over yourself Mr. Lynch.

It's a BOLD statement Tuesday

Johnny is man of this world. He gets out, he talks to people, he knows the dirt the powers that be have on each other (and keep those emails a-comin!) and he eats his way through Jersey City and New York City quite well thank you. In his time pounding the streets, whether just out and about or walking the dire wolf, a man can get hungry. A man knows food trucks have come a long way in haute cuisine and in different styles of nosh. Johnny has sampled a fair amount from food trucks in both Jersey City and NYC.

The food trucks in Jersey City are better.

NYC trucks seem to be too cliche and too much of the same thing. Jersey City trucks are trying new and exciting styles and some almost tasting-menu type stuff all up in your neighborhoods.

Discuss...

BREAKING NEWS: An explosion and fire on MTA A train line at 181st St.

A story you'll no doubt want to follow, an explosion and train fire late this morning according to witnesses down below on the MTA A line at 181st St. Gothamist has more and Johnny will monitor his Global Listening Station of Doom.

Sometimes all you want while the world burns is a good read

Well what about a good read that features international intrigue, American "royalty" such as George Washington and Aaron Burr and actual guys on money? How about we spice it up with a haunted house? How about if it was set in olde New York and Paris? Come friends, read the amazing history of Eliza Jumel, formerly the richest woman in America and her NYC mansion. 

Instead of wasting your lunchtime break outside, try reading this

Besides it's hot outside. Better off reading inside.

A great report today from The Village Voice about a tip the FBI got in 1950 that Russia had secretly placed an atomic bomb in a consulate in New York City:

In the summer of 1950, an FBI informant whose name we still don't know arrived in Brazil. While he was there, the informant received the following tip, which he relayed to the agency. As the file puts it: "[T]he Soviets have placed an atom bomb in a consulate, the identity of which he did not learn, in New York City to be detonated at such time as the Soviets consider expedient."

Was any of it true? Were the Soviets looking to place a bomb or drop off bomb parts in the middle of the night? What DID the FBI find out? Well friends you'll just have to read that part over lunch.

Toll Brothers does a lot of business in Jersey City

Now, we're not saying they do it well; their workers are slobs and care nothing about the neighborhoods they work in but what we just read about in New York City which Toll are actively defending, well it's just beyond the pale.

Toll Brothers has built projects where they add a few low-income or let's call them "affordable units" to a new building so they can gobble up your tax money they don't need in abatement form (Somebody needs to tell companies like Toll that the world won't end if they stopped building their shitty buildings). Then they $egregate the building. They have and are now openly defending putting in separate entrances for poor people vs. rich people. They don't really want the poor people at all but the poor people are what gets Toll the abatements. They wouldn't piss on the poors if they were on fire but they'll USE them to gain advantage. THAT is Toll Brothers.

What does Toll Brothers think about the criticism over their (and others) $egregation? Here we'll let David Von Spreckelsen, senior spokesmodel for Toll Brothers tell you how they see the poors who will use the "poor doors":

“So now you have politicians talking about that, saying how horrible those back doors are. I think it’s unfair to expect very high-income homeowners who paid a fortune to live in their building to have to be in the same boat as low-income renters, who are very fortunate to live in a new building in a great neighborhood.”

What an utter and complete piece of shit that David Von Spreckelsen is eh ladies and jellyspoons? What an attitude. But, again, THAT is Toll Brothers through and through. They are a classless company that we as a city should look long and hard at if we want to keep letting them do business here with their antiquated ideals. For now don't buy or rent from Toll Brothers properties. There are plenty of other choices around town that leave you feeling like a human being at the end of a day, not someone on a rope line hoping you can get into where you live because the riches are hanging out.

Has there ever been a better metaphor for what Toll Brothers really does to a neighborhood?

So, the Big Apple BBQ...

First here's a panorama of the fun in Madison Square Park yesterday (and the BBQ is going on today until 6pm):

Did you count the strollers? Here comes the waking that fine line without offending those with kids. The food of course is all first class or these pitmasters would not be at the Big Apple BBQ. Johnny, a veteran going back to the first BABBQ, expected this event would grow as people learned about how great it was.

It has reached critical mass, however. The event organizers, in a money grab have completely oversold the Fast Passes that allow holders along the inside of the BBQ tables, along the sidewalk, while those without use the streets for access. It began to really get crowded last year and Johnny suspected then they had oversold for what the event would well handle. However last year the Fast Passes were still quicker than not having one. This year that tipping point changed at some pitmaster stations. There were actually shorter lines for those without the Fast Passes and that is a problem. When you get the dozens of strollers inside that inner ring in the Fast pass area, they continually block the passageways, block food lines and block access to porta-johns. As always they seem to not notice they are holding people up. One woman with a stroller actually told someone Johnny was at the BBQ with to quiet down as her baby was sleeping in the stroller. Yeah, right, OK, lady. If you listen to music in the video you think she might have been a little out of line?

So yes, the stroller crowds are making the Saturday BABBQ their own to the chagrin of many of us veterans. Johnny thinks he'll try Sunday next year and if it's overrun with the strollers then he might have to give it up. A great event suffering under the weight of it's own success, both externally and internally.

Now, on with the pictures!

Hey you stupid assholes, did you know Jersey City is the fifth most stressed out city in America?!?!

STRESS! It makes interns write rude headlines doesn't it? Jersey City was just ranked fifth in the nation in being stressed out. Jersey City's biggest suburb, New York City, was ranked second. What kind of stupid annoying factors does it take to stress a city out? Oh dear god just read will you?

Jersey City had the third-highest commute time on the list (37 minutes on average) and was also third in population density, with 16,793 people per square mile, the report said. The city's total population was 247,597 according to the 2010 Census.

Jersey City tied was with New York for average hours worked per week at 39.4, but ranked higher for crime with 3,062 total incidents reported per 100,000 residents, the report said.

So everyone taking up all the roadways all the time and you fools who commit crimes are making the rest of us CRAZY! If you get robbed while commuting what, just shit yourself? Well?

That census number isn't even freaking right, Jersey City's population is exploding, like our RAGE!

Here, this should help, here's Enya with 'Sail Away' and remember, Enya likes it when you turn up her songs.

Macy's is moving the fireworks show back to the East River this year...*yawn*

All the caterwauling and sniveling from New York City residents about the 4th of July Macy's fireworks show over the Hudson River couldn't move old mayor Montgomery Burns to move it back to the East River near the Brooklyn Bridge. However Brooklyn resident and NYC mayor Bill deBlasio leaned on Macy's to move it back. So back it goes to NYC for this year anyway and we're not expecting a great outcry from New Jersey residents over the decision, certainly not the screeching like barn owls shown by New Yorkers back in 2009. New Jersey residents don't get that jacked up over something lasting forty five minutes. The last time that happened was a couple years back when the Devils eliminated the Rangers with a strong third period and an even better one minute overtime:

Dear NYC, we'll be at the beach,

Peace out,

NJ

Cell phone camera apps, which ones do you like best?

Like the ad says, more pictures are taken on iPhones than any other "camera" on earth. As you have seen here hundreds of times Johnny always carries his camera around because, well, you just never know what you may come across. But what of the apps that allow one to take stylized pictures? They can do so many things to spruce up a regular image. Case in point here are two pictures Johnny took today down on the river:

So dear readers, which filter or filters do you like using? The ones above were taken using the Lo-mob filter but Johnny also loves working with Photo Toaster and a Fisheye camera app. Feel free to share your ideas and links to pictures iffen you'd like to in comments.

We interrupt your New Year's Eve Music Series to announce a snowstorm!

8-12" from Thursday morning through Friday morning.

The Jersey City Desk Action Weather Team is naming this storm #WinterStormOgie